Share →
Buffer

P90X – Proof That You Must Be 100% Customer-Centric To Keep Advocates

By On · 9 Comments · In CRM, Customer Lifetime Value, Customer Loyalty, Social CRM

[widget id="ad_unit-3"]ad_unit-3[/widget]Today I finally got off my fat butt and decided to formulate my plan to get back into shape. I’ve been fit most of my life and I’ve always done something to stay that way. I’m in my late 40’s now, and it’s far easier to take time off and much harder to climb back. Nearly 4 years ago, I had my first child and this has only made things worse – in a better kind of way! I have no time to myself, yet a few years ago, I decided to purchase P90X, a personal fitness system that takes as much as 90 minutes a day of my time.

I’ve always known it took hard work to get the results I want, whether that’s in business or in fitness. So, I started with a bang and committed myself to P90X. I liked it! And Tony Horton (the trainer) is an upbeat guy and fun to workout with. Ok, the same stuff get’s old after awhile, but the beauty of this 12 DVD program is that it’s based on muscle confusion – so each month you’re doing different programs. Basically it stays fresh.

BeachBody® is a brand owned by Product Partners, LLC. I never really thought to look at that until today – and suddenly, things are beginning to make a world of sense to me. The reason I looked today is because I’ve been a little lax lately and haven’t been working out very much. Long story, same story. While I thought I had my DVDs tucked away in a nice safe location, I underestimated the abilities of my 3 year old son to seek and destroy. OK, I can’t say he destroyed them, but I know for fact that he found my original P90 box which is now empty of the 2 DVDs that came in it. Of my 12 P90X DVDs, 2 are missing.

I’m anal about this stuff so I know I didn’t lose them. And my son, after hours of interrogation STILL readily admits that he lost them :) .

Today I decided to call Beachbody® to order a replacement for the 2 P90X DVDs I lost – I mean, my son lost. Given my experience with the company to date, I didn’t think it would be a problem at all. I’ve already purchased the product (the content) and I talk this product with everyone I meet that shows an interest fitness. Basically, I’m an advocate in the real world. Never had a reason to write about, until now.

So, I went to the website and and initiated an online chat session with Craig. I told Craig my story and he went off to confirm that I was a customer.

This is where I’m going to stop and tell you what the original 12 DVD set for P90x cost me. It was just over $100.

When Craig came back, he informed me the replacement, per DVD was $29.95 plus $6.95 shipping and handling. GULP! I reminded him that I was simply ordering a replacement to a DVD I lost. I had already purchased the content. How much does a DVD plus some inconvenience cost, anyway? He confirmed that this was the price. So, with my hands tied and a strong desire to get back to it, I ordered the 1 DVD I absolutely needed. All told with tax the cost to me approached $40, or just under half the price for the entire 12 DVD set.

Let’s Examine The Company

I’ve always thought this group was fairly innovative. They’ve used the power of online communities to deal with the motivational aspect of the problem we all face. Creating peer groups of people struggling through the same issue is one powerful way to keep people motivated. After all, we’re not talking about 15 minutes here. These are extremely intense 60-90 minute workouts and it’s tough to stay motivated. It’s even tougher to restart after a week or two off.

They also provide a lot of content on diet. It’s good stuff. The best I’ve seen over the years for sure. The provide some good tools to help your chart your success as you go as well, and for many people this is a very powerful type of positive reinforcement. The last thing they do is assign a coach to you. And this is where everything begins to fall apart in my opinion.

The coach is a BeachBody product user who has decided to make an income from the various products being sold. They are not employees, so even if there were a customer-centric culture going on in the company, how could you possibly enforce it across this army of fitness experts. The simple truth is that you can’t. So, I’ve watched my coach over the past few years attempt to stay in front of us using Facebook or the occasional product pitch email wrapped in motivational talk. Booorrring! Wow, for a company that seemed to be on the innovation track and a strong tie-in to social community building, all I see now is a pure marketing organization, and one that really doesn’t understand customers they way they project themselves.

I am no longer an advocate. I’m not even loyal anymore, let alone satisfied.

Where Is Their Strategic Flaw?

The answer is very simple. They don’t really understand the job being done by their customers. The job doesn’t have an unlimited budget, but the people doing it are highly motivated. Yes, I made the purchase today because the product is good. But the original attraction was both price and perceived effectiveness. Instead of dropping thousands on a home gym or $50 a month for a gym membership, you can get this set of DVD’s and a plan for about $100. And you can do it at home, cutting the travel time out of the equation.

P90X people must to be highly motivated to do what they do. And this does create a sort of advocacy for the product and for the trainer, Tony Horton. I was an advocate, until today. I was asked to pay 4 times the original cost of a single DVD after having paid for the content already. They couldn’t simply offer my a nominal cost for the physical DVD and shipping. Nope, they couldn’t do that little thing.

This transaction would have cost BeachBody (Partner Products, LLC) nothing. So why do they have this policy of taking advantage of loyal users of their products? Well, that’s a question that only Carl Daikeler, the CEO can answer. By the way, you will not find  comment form at the other end of that link. However, there are comments at his blog, which may or may not be moderated ;)

The Moral of The Story

You can take an inside-out marketing company and give them social tools and an army of affiliates, but you just can’t get them to really understand their customer needs when all they’re doing is shouting about their product via Facebook, emails, and all night infomercials. It may be a decent product or portfolio of products, but in the end, is there really any value coming back to me, the customer? I know some would argue value-in-use. However, when your 3 year old gets involved there is no longer any use. And this is the strategic plan BeachBody came up with? The answer is no, there is no value in use, because the chain of use has been broken. This is an easy problem to fix. The culture that didn’t deal with it up front is a different matter.

This is one of the reasons why using sentiment analysis to manage your brand is an inside-out endeavor and really not very strategic. First, you are focused on your brand (inside-out) and second, it’s too late to retain this defected customer. I wonder if BeachBody even uses a social media monitoring tool? Maybe I’ll find out.

Tagged with: • • • •  
avatar
About The Author

Mike Boysen

Mike Boysen, founder of Effective CRM, is a strategic consultant in the CRM arena. He brings practical insight to businesses to help them understand customer-centered business strategy: outside-in process design, frameworks for understanding customer needs, understanding the jobs of your customers, market growth through innovation, behavior driven relationship marketing programs and designing systems to support these initiatives. The technology part is simple, so why are you spending so much money on that? Can't answer that? This is not the CRM your friends have been talking about...

Visit Authors Website →

  • Pingback: Customer-Centric Round-up June 1, 2010-CRM at Effective CRM

  • http://effective-crm-consulting.com Mike Boysen

    Here’s an update to the P90X / Beachbody story above. It took nearly a day, but the tweets and the retweets got a response from the Beachbody social media monitoring team (Pierre). I DM’d my contact info and was called by someone in customer service a day later to resolve my issue.

    I was asked which DVDs I needed to replace and I shared that – this included the 2 DVDs that came with the P90 (not X) program I had purchased first. I was given a credit for $29.95 and and the remaining DVDs would be shipped. My total cost $6.95 for 4 DVDs.

    That’s extremely fair. I fully expected to pay some kind of fee for the cost of the raw DVD. So, I asked if this were being done simply because I made a stink, or is this policy? I was told that the policy is to replace DVDs for customers for only the cost of shipping. If that’s in fact the policy – and I’m sure it is – they are definitely over-delivering in the expectation department.

    However, it’s one thing to have a customer-centric strategy and it’s another to fully align process to it. In this case, the personnel manning the online chat point of contact are not well versed in the policy. In fact, I challenged the person (and have the logs) regarding this matter and was clearly told this was the policy – in so many words.

    Beachbody, like many companies who grow at an incredible rate, often find them selves entangled in the spaghetti and meatballs that seem reasonable when you’re just starting out – but begin causing friction during growth. It may be time for them to have a pro come in and help paint a picture of the problem from the customer’s point of view and help design a more friction free process to support their policy.

    • http://effective-crm-consulting.com Mike Boysen

      By, the way, I’m an advocate again with wary eye on their obvious inside-out marketing tactics. Oh well, no one is perfect. P90X is nearly a perfect product – anyway, it works for me.

      Now, if they could just get their coaches to motivate people to keep at it instead of marketing products (poorly) all the time we’d be getting somewhere.

      Call me, I can help.

  • http://effective-crm-consulting.com Mike Boysen

    Here's an update to the P90X / Beachbody story above. It took nearly a day, but the tweets and the retweets got a response from the Beachbody social media monitoring team (Pierre). I DM'd my contact info and was called by someone in customer service a day later to resolve my issue.

    I was asked which DVDs I needed to replace and I shared that – this included the 2 DVDs that came with the P90 (not X) program I had purchased first. I was given a credit for $29.95 and and the remaining DVDs would be shipped. My total cost $6.95 for 4 DVDs.

    That's extremely fair. I fully expected to pay some kind of fee for the cost of the raw DVD. So, I asked if this were being done simply because I made a stink, or is this policy? I was told that the policy is to replace DVDs for customers for only the cost of shipping. If that's in fact the policy – and I'm sure it is – they are definitely over-delivering in the expectation department.

    However, it's one thing to have a customer-centric strategy and it's another to fully align process to it. In this case, the personnel manning the online chat point of contact are not well versed in the policy. In fact, I challenged the person (and have the logs) regarding this matter and was clearly told this was the policy – in so many words.

    Beachbody, like many companies who grow at an incredible rate, often find them selves entangled in the spaghetti and meatballs that seem reasonable when you're just starting out – but begin causing friction during growth. It may be time for them to have a pro come in and help paint a picture of the problem from the customer's point of view and help design a more friction free process to support their policy.

  • http://effective-crm-consulting.com Mike Boysen

    By, the way, I'm an advocate again with wary eye on their obvious inside-out marketing tactics. Oh well, no one is perfect. P90X is nearly a perfect product – anyway, it works for me.

    Now, if they could just get their coaches to motivate people to keep at it instead of marketing products (poorly) all the time we'd be getting somewhere.

    Call me, I can help.

  • http://twitter.com/bsdalton Barry Dalton

    Mike – interesting post about Beachbody. I am a huge fan of P90X. I started the original 90 program (full on, strict 7 days a week, no cheating on the diet) And as a former (emphasis on THAT word) competitive athlete, I was blown away by the program. I’m still doing it 16 months later and have added P90X Plus and THorton’s One on One programs to mix things up. But as for the company, I’m right there with you. And, I wrote about it a while back (http://custservicestories.blogspot.com/2010/01/hard-bodies-in-customer-service.html) I’ve had a bit of a better experience on the customer service side with returns, etc. But, my one issue is you can put the direct marketing company into social media but you cant take the direct marketing out of the company.

    The relentless upselling that happens on the website at check out is just insane! So much so, I bailed out the first two times I went to order P90X. As I’ve ordered subsequent products, the process seems to have gotten a bit better. But I too am now cautious. I’ll recommend Tony Horton to anyone serious about getting in shape. But, it comes with the caution about these antiquated selling techniques.

    • http://effective-crm-consulting.com Mike Boysen

      Wow. I’ve been having motivational problems. I guess I’ll see you in Wowy. Hopefully, I can get back into it after this episode. I’ve never felt better than when I’ve got these workouts incorporated into my life. It’s really just a matter of a 48 year old juggling a job and an almost 4 year old.

  • http://twitter.com/bsdalton Barry Dalton

    Mike – interesting post about Beachbody. I am a huge fan of P90X. I started the original 90 program (full on, strict 7 days a week, no cheating on the diet) And as a former (emphasis on THAT word) competitive athlete, I was blown away by the program. I'm still doing it 16 months later and have added P90X Plus and THorton's One on One programs to mix things up. But as for the company, I'm right there with you. And, I wrote about it a while back (http://custservicestories.blogspot.com/2010/01/…) I've had a bit of a better experience on the customer service side with returns, etc. But, my one issue is you can put the direct marketing company into social media but you cant take the direct marketing out of the company.

    The relentless upselling that happens on the website at check out is just insane! So much so, I bailed out the first two times I went to order P90X. As I've ordered subsequent products, the process seems to have gotten a bit better. But I too am now cautious. I'll recommend Tony Horton to anyone serious about getting in shape. But, it comes with the caution about these antiquated selling techniques.

  • http://effective-crm-consulting.com Mike Boysen

    Wow. I've been having motivational problems. I guess I'll see you in Wowy. Hopefully, I can get back into it after this episode. I've never felt better than when I've got these workouts incorporated into my life. It's really just a matter of a 48 year old juggling a job and an almost 4 year old.